Alex Johnson is a journalist and author of How to Give Your Child a Lifelong Love of Reading, which is packed with practical advice and recommendations for encouraging your child to read, as well as contributions from a host of children’s writers, including Michael Rosen, Cressida Cowell and Jacqueline Wilson.
We are asked all the time for book recommendations for kids who love sport. If your youngsters, like mine, are missing their usual sports clubs, teams and activities during lockdown, why not try quenching their sporty thirst with some of these fiction books for sport-loving kids?
One of the things we love about reading with kids is the wider world it opens up for them and the book we sent our Parakeet subscribers last month is the perfect example. Too Small Tola is set in bustling Lagos, Nigeria, and stars Tola, a young girl who lives with her brother, sister and grandmother. Here we share 6 more books set in Africa which you might like to look out for.
Our favourite day of the year is almost here – hooray! Don’t panic if you haven’t got your costume sorted yet, as we’ve got some super easy World Book Day costume hacks for you, plus lots of other creative ways you can celebrate with your young bookworms this week.
The sheer volume of kids’ books published every month can be a bit overwhelming – how do you find the gems? Of course, one answer is to join our book club! Another great way to keep track of the finest (and funniest) kids’ books as they are published is to follow some of the excellent kids’ book bloggers out there. Here we share our top five.
Kids just love a series. Children of all ages like the familiarity of a series, of a character they’ve got to know over a number of books and having the confidence that they are picking up a book they know they’re going to enjoy. But what do you do when they’re stuck in a bit of a Harry Potter rut? We share our recommendations for series that are perfect for older readers.
Taking that step from picture books to being read chapter books can seem like a big milestone in any child’s reading life. We’ve picked 5 chapter book series for kids that we think are perfect for making the transition to chapter books. They’re all highly illustrated but long enough that the story is enjoyed over the course of a few reading sessions.
Reading in the Park is our way of celebrating the social side of reading with our local community. What a pleasure to be able to enjoy the warmer weather, get outside and get kids reading!
As children of the 1980s, we grew up reading Roald Dahl and there is absolutely no denying the enormous impact his books have had on not one but several generations of young bookworms. But if we keep going back to Roald Dahl, how will kids discover the raft of contemporary, culturally-relevant children’s books that are being published right now?
Informal book clubs organised by a group of friends have become increasingly popular amongst the UK’s adult population in recent years. But what about our children? Why should the grown-ups have all the fun? If you’ve got a young bookworm in your family, why not help them set up their own book club?
There’s a lot of focus at this time of year on building healthy habits for both body and mind. What if I told you that there was one simple and enjoyable habit that could significantly impact your child’s happiness and wellbeing? And even better, that you’re probably already doing it?
One of the questions we are asked most often is ‘how do you choose the books you send to subscribers?' We are always pleased to be able to reassure customers that we have read (and re-read) every single book we send, plus many more in our efforts to shortlist the most appropriate for our boxes. These are the things that we look for when we’re shortlisting titles.
